How To Avoid Colds
The prevalence of the common cold (or house-fly) at this time of
year makes it advisable for everyone who possibly can to formulate
a set of ten rules for their avoidance. At the end of the open
season the best set of ten rules will be embroidered on a handkerchief
and presented to the author to use for his own cold.
Here, as nearly as I can remember them, are my ten rules for avoiding
the common head-cold:
1. Don't breathe through your mouth or your nose. These two
orifices have been called "The Twin Roads to Germville" and, on a
busy day, present a picture to the microscope similar to that of
the Boston Turnpike. So long as people use their mouths and their
noses to breathe through, we are going to have epidemics, plagues
and eventual disintegration of the human race.
Your surgeon will be glad to fit you up with a small tube which can
be inserted into the throat and worked with a nickel handpump. This
will supply you with all the air you need for an ordinary day's
breathing. Most of us get too much air anyway. Ordinary breathing
air has been called "Nature's Exhaust," and the less we load ourselves
up with the better.
2. Avoid crowds. This applies to all times of the year. You never
know who may be in a crowd, and mingling with one may result in
your being reminded of an old fifty-dollar loan or a promise to
drop in and hear someone sing. Even of no one in the crowd has a
cold, there is always someone who wants to push or romp, and you
are pretty sure to have your hat knocked off. A good way to avoid
crowds is to stay right in your room all day with the door locked.
3. Get plenty of sleep. When people come to awaken you in the
morning, pull the covers up over your head and say: "Go away, I am
avoiding a cold." When you have guests who hang around after
midnight, excuse yourself politely by saying: "Now I will go in
and get my preventive sleep. This is the season for colds, you
know." If, during the afternoon, you feel drowsy at your work,
just put your head over on your desk and take a little nap. Your
boss will understand if you put a little sign up by your elbow
reading: "Men asleep here. Cold prevention."
4. Change heads frequently during the day. Have an extra supply
of heads in your room (or in a large bag, if you travel about) and
when you feel one stuffing-up, take it off and put on a fresh one.
5. Stay in a temperature of between 60 and 70 degrees. This can
be done by jumping on board a train for Palm Beach and lying on the
sand for a month or so. Be sure, however, to lie face up, with the
arms outstretched, so that the sun can send its actinic rays across
your chest and into your eyes. This is the hardest part of this
rule to follow out. The temperature of the gambling rooms will be
just about right in the evening, so you won't have to lie on your
back there.
6. Don't dose up with patent medicines and nostrums. A sitz-bath
or rock-and-rye twice a day, using ordinary care not to bruise
yourself on the rock-candy, ought to be all the medicinal treatment
you will need.
7. Eat a balanced diet. No proteins, no starches, no carbohydrates.
Just a good steak with lyonnaise potatoes and asparagus now and
then during the day. Remember the old adage: "Stuff a cold and
stuff a fever."
8. No exercise. This is all-important. Exercise just stirs up
the poisons in your system and makes you a hot-bed of disease. Sit,
or lie, as still as possible, and smoke constantly. If you can
stand it, have somebody read aloud to you. If you can't stand it,
scream, "Stop that reading out loud!"
9. If you think that you have caught a cold, call in a good doctor.
Call in three good doctors and play bridge.
10. And, above all, don't catch cold.
from Benchley - Or Else!, by Robert Benchley.
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